Federal Court Permanently Strikes Down Coercive North Carolina Ultrasound Law as Unconstitutional

01.17.14 - (PRESS
RELEASE)
A federal court today permanently blocked a 2011 North Carolina law that would
have forced women to undergo a narrated ultrasound before being allowed to end
a pregnancy, stating that the measure “compels a health care provider to act as
the state’s courier and to disseminate the state’s message discouraging
abortion, in the provider’s own voice, in the middle of a medical procedure,
and under circumstances where it would seem the message is the provider’s and
not the state’s. This is not allowed under the First Amendment.”

The
law—which required abortion providers to display the ultrasound and describe
the images in detail to every woman before performing an abortion, even if the
woman objects—has been preliminarily
blocked since October 2011 following a lawsuit filed by the Center for
Reproductive Rights, American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina
Legal Foundation, Planned Parenthood, and the firm of O’Melveny & Myers on behalf of several North Carolina
physicians.

Said
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:

“Today’s decision represents a robust
affirmation of the First Amendment rights of physicians, making clear that
politicians cannot use physicians as mouthpieces for their political agenda and
interfere with patients’ personal decision making.”

“Politicians
don’t know better than doctors how to practice medicine, and they don’t know
better than women how to navigate the often complicated personal circumstances
surrounding a pregnancy.

“That
has not stopped politicians in North Carolina from interfering with the medical
judgment of doctors and the personal decision making of women, and it is a
shame we have to rely on the courts to do so instead.

“The
court’s ruling makes clear that politicians cannot use physicians as
mouthpieces for their political agenda, and reaffirms the constitutional right
of every woman to decide for herself whether to continue or end a pregnancy.

The North
Carolina mandatory ultrasound law, which the General Assembly passed in 2011
over the veto of then-Governor Bev Perdue, is one of the most extreme
ultrasound laws in the country.

While the
law would allow the woman to “avert her eyes” from the ultrasound screen and to
“refuse to hear” the explanation of the images, the provider would still be
required to place the images in front of her and describe them in detail over
her objection. The North Carolina law makes no exceptions for women
under any circumstances, including rape or incest, serious health risks, or severe
fetal abnormalities.

In November
2013 the U.S.
Supreme Court refused to review a similar law from Oklahoma, allowing the
ruling from the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocking the measure as unconstitutional
to stand.

Harmful and
unconstitutional restrictions like these further underscore the need for the recently-introduced
federal Women's Health Protection Act—an historic piece of legislation designed
to enforce and protect the rights of every woman to obtain a full range of safe
and legal reproductive health care and decide for herself whether to continue
or end a pregnancy, regardless of where she lives, within the framework of
regulations and limits recognized in Roe
v. Wade.